Category: Mythbuntu

Lirc and Volume

We have been having trouble with the remote not being able to control the volume on our Mythbuntu installation.  I just came across the pulseaudio-module-lirc package —

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-module-lirc

My mute button didn’t work, so I tried adding the lirc configuration as explained in this thread.  It didn’t work.  The volume up and down did work though before I added that configuration.  The only thing I didn’t like was that it didn’t show the visual volume display on the screen.

On a side note, I found another application that looked interesting from this post: gizmod.  Actually, even though the post says they don’t have deb packages, I found one already in the repositories!

Another handy program is unclutter:

sudo apt-get install unclutter

It hides the mouse cursor so that you don’t see it in front of the videos you are watching.  I found it here, and here is another post about it.

Hulu with MythTV

We found some of the old shows on Hulu, and we have really been enjoying them: Bewitched, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, etc.  Since we don’t have cable, this works great for us.  It’s like a new kind of TV!

On top of that, I found out that I could install the Hulu application on my MythTV box.

I downloaded it from here:

Hulu Desktop (Linux)

And, I followed these directions:

Mythbuntu Wiki: Hulu Desktop in Mythbuntu

Sound for Mythbuntu

I couldn’t get my sound to work.  Here is what I went through.

This command will help you figure out what is installed:

skp@peanut:~$ lspci -v | grep -i audio
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)

This command can also help identify what is installed:

skp@peanut:~$ asoundconf list
Names of available sound cards:
NVidia

This command will also give you some clues:

skp@peanut:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC883 Analog [ALC883 Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC883 Digital [ALC883 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

My problem was that this command said there were no sound devices.  I found I need to make the following changes.

I added these lines to the  /etc/modprobe.d/options file:

# from: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6313016
options snd-hda-intel model=3stack

I added these lines to the /etc/modules:

# from: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6313016
snd-hwdep
snd-hda-intel

Then, I rebooted, and the sound worked!